John Frusciante Steps Away from Commercially Released Music

BY Sarah MurphyPublished May 26, 2015

Accomplished guitarist John Frusciante has found tons of success throughout his career, serving as the guitarist for Red Hot Chili Peppers until 2009, as well as releasing a solid catalogue of solo material. He took things in an electronic direction earlier this year, releasing a self-titled album as Trickfinger, too — but it looks like it might be his last recording to see official release for a long time.
 
In a recent interview with Electronic Beats, the musician discussed the music that has inspired his own creative process, opening up about his electronic influences. He also, however, revealed that while he's got some recorded material in his arsenal, he has no plans to release it for commercial consumption.
 
"For the last year and a half I made the decision to stop making music for anybody and with no intention of releasing it, which is what I was doing between 2008 and 2012," he said. "I felt that if I took the public into consideration at all, I wasn't going to grow and I wasn't going to learn. Being an electronic musician meant I had to woodshed for a while, so I have a good few years' worth of material from that period that's never been released."
 
And although he has far from given up recording material, Frusciante seems content to just make music for himself right now. 
 
"Recently I've been making really abstract music out of samples," he told Electronic Beats. "I don't have any preconceived idea of what I'm going to do going into it, I just let the samples guide me, and gradually add in synthesizers and drum machines to it to round it out.
 
"At this point I have no audience. I make tracks and I don't finish them or send them to anybody, and consequently I get to live with the music. The music becomes the atmosphere that I'm living in. I either make really beautiful music that comes from classical, or I make music where the tempo is moving the whole time, and there's no melodic or rhythmic center. It's just disorienting music that's falling apart."
 
Read the full interview with Frusciante over here, and listen to "After Below" from Trickfinger in the player below.
 

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